Free Enterprise - Literally

Free Enterprise – Literally

(From the Bristol Evening Post): Outside Bristol Zoo is the car park, with spaces for 150 cars and 8 coaches. It has been manned 6 days a week for 23 years by the same charming and very polite car park attendant with the ticket machine. The charges are £1 per car and £5 per coach.

On Monday 1 June, he did not turn up for work.

Bristol Zoo management phoned Bristol City Council to ask them to send a replacement parking attendant.

The Council said “That car park is your responsibility.”

The Zoo said “The attendant was employed by the City Council wasn’t he?”

The Council said “What attendant?”

Gone missing is a man who has been taking daily car park fees amounting to about £400 per day for the last 23 years.

No-one knows who he is/was!

A few calculations: Over the term, his take would have been £2,870,400 or AU$5,883,893.

If you factor in that he was off the radar and probably paid no tax, that would translate to pre-tax earnings of well over $8.33m.

This unknown entrepreneur has given a whole new meaning to the term “Free Enterprise“!

Postscript

A few days after this article was posted, we received the following email from one of our clients, “Hi Peter, This is a great story -and particularly relevant because an associate and I were visiting the Zoo a short while ago with the intention of selling them a painting programme and we did pay for parking that day. Regards Max”☺

Peter Rowe